I’m heading out to go hiking with a friend today (yay we both have no class on Fridays!!), but before I leave I just wanted to post this article I saw on MSN (courtesy of Marie Claire) yesterday, entitled “Forced to be Fat.” Here’s the blurb from MSN:
In Mauritania, where big is beautiful and stretch marks are sexy, young girls are brutally force-fed a diet of up to 16,000 calories a day – more than four times that of a male bodybuilder – to prepare them for marriage.
As a Sociology major in college, I find it fascinating and very sad how societal ideals completely change people’s images of themselves, and what is considered to be “beautiful.” It’s hard to believe that two countries can be so different — here in US, with girls starving themselves to be thin, and in Mauritania in northwest Africa, the complete opposite.
What do you all think about this? Do you think we will ever exist in a world where a more average sized, healthy body is the ideal norm?
